No. I kinda knew I was gay when I was 6 years old and liked
television's Roy Rogers a WHOLE LOT. But I wrote a heck of a
lot of stuff before I actually admitted to myself I was gay and
"came out" at about age 25, and that stuff didn't really
have any gay content. I wrote a few poems in high school. (One
of them won an award of some kind.) There was no obvious gay
content in those poems. Then I renounced poems and wrote short
stories pretty much exclusively from about age 22-38. (About
50 of those short stories were published in various places.)
There was no real gay content in any of those short stories.
Then, when I turned 40, it was like some switch just flipped
on somewhere in my head and I suddenly just started spewing tons
of poetry, and that's when I really started writing about gay
stuff. When I was 25ish, I wrote 3 novels, but they were really
really bad, and I tore them up and threw them away long ago.
Come to think of it, maybe one of those 3 novels was my "coming-out"
novel -- as I recall it WAS pretty darn gay, and in a first-person
narrative, too.

Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?

I grew up in rural backwoodsy places -- not too far from Prell,
VA, actually. I was a bookworm. I made all A's practically.
I took long walks in the woods and sometimes disappeared into
the woods for a whole day at a time, sunrise to sunset. I needed
it, the quiet, nature, little beasties and beautiful plants all
around. Also, the woods felt primal, primitive. Sexy. I was manic
depressive. When I was 18, I was suicidal and was put into a
mental hospital for 3 months. It was a good hospital and I got
good treatment and I'm pretty sure that place saved my life.
In college I majored in Biology and minored in English and fell
in love with various cute guys, only I still didn't admit to
myself that what I was doing was falling in love with guys. (mumble
mumble, something, something) By the way, I'm still bipolar (the
new term for "manic depressive"), but the highs are
not as high as they were when I was young, and the lows are not
as low. But sometimes I still have at least a few hours in a
month when things seem REALLY wonderful (far TOO wonderful if
you know what I mean), and a few hours when things seem really
REALLY bad.

Do you think the small press are too segregated by sexuality,
race, or gender?

Well, I do think that some publications are just totally unwilling
to consider sexy gay poems at all. Some places won't even consider
not-so-sexy gay poems. (mumble mumble, something something) Actually,
I haven't submitted to all that many different places over the
past 10 years. I just found places that I liked, and that liked
me, and pretty much stuck with those. In general, those places
tend to publish a wide variety of stuff -- straight kinds of
stuff, gay kinds of stuff, undetermined kinds of stuff, and not-important-to-the-work-that-you-know-that
kinds of stuff! Three "wide-variety" places that come
to mind are Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, and Future Tense Books.
I think Chiron Review publishes a tremendous variety of stuff,
and likes to show off work from all kinds of writers. Editor
Michael Hathaway has been very receptive to my stuff, and I sure
continue to appreciate that! And Nerve Cowboy has published
at least one of my poems in almost every single issue they've
done. And Kevin Sampsell at Future Tense Books gave me a real
ego-boost long ago when Brandon Freels (when Brandon was doing
those "Mr. Puke" reviews) suggested I send Kevin some
of my poems. Kevin read over my stuff and asked if he could do
a chapbook of some of my work. I said yes, and that's how it
came about that Future Tense Books published "Museum Quality
Orgasm"; which I still think contains some of my sweetest,
sexiest, and funniest poems. "Shy Boys At Home" is
my only other chapbook, and was published by Chiron Review Press
two or three years after Museum Quality Orgasm." "Shy
Boys At Home" is real nice, too, or so it seems to me! But
"museum quality orgasm" is perhaps just a tad bit more
emotionally intense than "Shy Boys At Home." I like
emotional intensity in poems.

How long have you been married now, and how does that sort
of thing
fly in Virginia?

My lover Jon and I have been together for over 22 years. I
use the term "married" even though we've not done anything
to make our marriage "legal" or quasi-legal, even.
We just consider ourselves married. I don't know how it flies
in Virginia, in general: we don't tell every tom dick and harry
on the street that we're married. Only the lucky few!

Museum Quality Orgasm has a wonderful balance of poems that
mix
sexuality and humor. Have those things always been essential
to your
work?

I just write the kind of poems I like to read, ya know? Important
elements for me are sexy guys, sensuality, sweetness, gentleness,
humor, stuff that doesn't take itself too seriously, stuff like
that. The fact that right this minute, some where in some warm
sunny room, a cute sexy naked big-dicked young man is smearing
butter on his balls just because he's never tried that before
and he hopes it'll feel really really good, well, that's an image
i've generally learned to savor, and not repress.

Who are the hottest guys on television (and who would you
like to "out")?

I don't want to "out" anybody. That's something
folks do for themselves if the circumstances seem to fit right.
But in terms of the hottest guys on television, I do think these
guys are sexy: Tom Welling on "Smallville", Gale Harold
on "Queer As Folk", Charlie Hunnam on "Undeclared",
David Duchovny in the early "X-Files", Jonathan Taylor
Thomas on tv movies such as "Walking Across Egypt"
and "On Common Ground", Matt and Joey Lawrence on
re-runs of "Brotherly Love", and Ashton Kutcher on
"That 70s Show".